One part of our city is at war with the rest of us, and tries to normalize this violence with thousands of hours of family-friendly images of happy leaders. But we still have the basics of free speech, the immanence of gestures and language in our bodies. That’s why the police study us so hard – we are considered incendiary in our flesh. We could do anything. And in fact, gatherings of people in their physical form in public space – that is how history’s change has always arrived.

I feel closer to solving the riddle of activism in 2009. We’ve known how conservative the Democrat/Working Families and the Republican/Independent parties are. It’s Coke and Pepsi, it’s McDonalds and Burger King. The two party system enforces a strict censorship. We had to experience first-hand the harsh silence of it.

The hundreds upon hundreds of articles in the New York Times that never mention a third party… we had to experience this first-hand. It goes hand in hand with the arresting of people in small groups, such as peace vigils in the parks, surrounded by police and surveillance. The criminalizing of dissent goes hand in hand with the $50 million built environment of electronic ads. The imitation of democracy continues on our televisions and computers, but you can’t do it yourself in public space.

The mainstream press acts as if it is the commons of our democracy. They pretend that they don’t notice how far it’s gone. By not questioning Consumerism as a totalizing economy, they disappear farther and farther into their minor cleverness. We read articles about how Bloomberg chooses his leather coat for his latest ad, or where he parks his Falcon 900 jet. I would laugh at this if I wasn’t running, but as a candidate I directly feel how tortured these writers have become, putting up walls against the inflow of crucial and new ideas, but also refusing to write about things are far more interesting.

I’m ending our campaign today by walking through the three downtown parks, Washington Square, Union Square and Tompkins Square. I’ll carry my small electronic bullhorn without a permit, as I have throughout the campaign. I’ll talk to small groups of folks about how our voices carry, and how our voices don’t carry, in this strange $100 million Playstation that Bloomberg’s turned our city into. And I’m glad I ran because I’ve been reminded that I’m not the only one still talking. There is a coalition of immigrants and artists, students and bloggers and parents in the boroughs - talking back against this expensive media wind. There is a radical freedom in the most ordinary sounding conversations on the corner. Our voices are carrying enough when walk together, when we talk across a subway car.

One part of our city is at war with the rest of us, and tries to normalize this violence with thousands of hours of family-friendly images of happy leaders. But we still have the basics of free speech, the immanence of gestures and language in our bodies. That’s why the police study us so hard – we are considered incendiary in our flesh. We could do anything. And in fact, gatherings of people in their physical form in public space – that is how history’s change has always arrived.

It is from our bodies that our voices carry. If they try to shut down our public air, well, we haven’t stopped loving the acoustics in our public places, the American sound of our rising voice.

At least somebody in the mayoral race stood up against corporation dominance while running an actual campaign. Where was Bill Thompson all those years? Doing his best to maintain the corporate status quo, just not nearly as effectively as Bloomberg.

Even with running the most expensive political campaign in u.s. history (outside of presidential campaigns), spending millions more buying endorsements all over town (from unions, non-profits, prominent community members, corporate media), Obama refusing to campaign for any NYC mayoral challenger (despite the fact that Obama was in/near NYC several... Read More times during the campaign), and the fact that bloomberg ran against a corpse (Thompson) and a few fringe candidates, he (bloomberg) won the election by only 5% & only got 51% of the vote with a dismal 25% turnout. The people are pissed off & disgusted & we can (& need to) do whatever we have to to make his next 4 yrs. as much hell as he'll continue to try to make ours as we the majority in NYC fight for our very survival. Look out for the protest announcements, & see all of you in the streets!

And Corzine's rout in New Jersey may also signal that the fashion for the "entrepreneurial candidate" is on the wane. That might mean one less asshole cramming free market ideology down our throats from a public office. Are you listening, Tom Golisano?

This is an interesting map which breaks down the mayoral votes by district:

Too bad you choose to maintain your illusion with the strawman that I implied you said that Corzine's defeat "meant the end of capitalism" instead of what I actually said, that Christie's victory is a victory for the right, not the left. That's just reality. But keep fooling yourself if you want to.

Christie's victory is a sign of confusion more than anything else. He, and the Republican who won in Virginia, both ran as centrists and completely hid their social agenda. Yes, of course, voters should be able to see right through such transparency, but when people are confused and angry they don't think things through.

The New Jersey vote is a vote against Corzine, a cold fish Wall Street fat cat whom nobody likes, and definitely not for Christie. But that alone would have meant a Corzine victory anyway, because people in New Jersey don't go for right-wing loons. What tipped the balance is that the Democrats now stand for bailing out Wall Street, something that quite naturally pisses off a lot of people. So if the Democrats are going to stand with the worst, most greedy speculators, then a certain amount of people are going to vote against them, which means, for the typical voter, a Republican.

New Jersey had the country's longest Democratic winning streak -- 12 years without electing a Republican to any statewide office. It's quite far-fetched to suggest the state has suddenly lunged to the right. In four years, Christie will get booted out because four years of right-wing garbage and a continuing bad economy will sober up some of Christie's voters.

Neither corporate party has any answer. Getting rid of the capitalist system is the only solution. But the Left is going to have to start coming up with concrete ideas.

Fulani was adamant that she would not endorse Bloomberg after the third term limit was overturned. She grandstanded publicly that she wouldn't support him. Then she turned on a dime or rather millions of dimes.

One thing is certain, Bloomberg's media organizations won't be investigating Fulani and Newman's operation with its "short term psychotherapy" for the next four years and neither will anyone else with connections to candidates who want to win elections in NYC.

"But the Left is going to have to start coming up with concrete ideas."

The left can spend the next four years complaing that Obama destroyed their ability to organize, then beg for more non-profit money as rich liberals get disillusioned with him, just like they did under Clinton.

It's all good. Obama's a godsend. Never mind that "the left" could never effectively organize even under Bush. You can retroactively spin the fantasy that in 2004 and 2005 you were only one or two demonstrations away from revolution.

Then when the Republicans take back the White House, 2012 or 2016, it doesn't really matter, you can sound the tocsin of imminent Nazism and get even bigger grants from the non-profits.

Jerseyites do vote for right wing loons on the local level. And since no place in Jersey is very different from any other place, don't think that you won't see Steve Lonegan and Scott Garrett types in the future.

What kept the right wing loons out of statewide office was the strong Democratic machine. The more you attack the liberal machine, the more you open the door for Palinites Paulites and Huckabeeites.

Anybody who thinks there's a left in New Jersey is delusional. Jerseyites tend to be right wing racist suburban assholes, a bit different stylistically from the kind you get in the south (a bit less Jesus), but just as crazy and just as mean.

Your "analysis" (for want of a better term we will use that) is sort of mindless. The United Front died before even the corrupt bandit Stalin did. We have moved on. It is long passed the time that you do the same.

Yes, of course, parts of New Jersey vote for right-wing loons on the local level, the same as in every other state. But it is not true that Democrats win at the state level because of the "strong Democratic machine," it is because the state's Republican suburbanites tend to the Rockefeller/Big Business wing. Before Christie last week, the only two Republicans elected state-wide in 25 years were both big business centrists, Tom Kean and Christine Todd Whitman. Kean really was a centrist, and Whitman more pretended to be one, but she had to pretend to be one because of the state's social mores -- remember, she actually was compelled to sign a gay rights bill, making New Jersey one of the first states in the country to do so.

None of the above implies that there is some sort of Left in New Jersey. There is not. It just means that we should not overanalyze one election. What it does mean is that the Democrats' ability to fool people into seeing them as on the side of working people is potentially coming to an end, perhaps rapidly. It also means what I wrote earlier, that the election was a referendum on Corzine's personality more than any other issue, and that the Democrats' bailouts of Wall Street has sown confusion into the minds of many people, a confusion that the hard Right has taken advantage of, in part because of their dominance of the corporate mass media.

The task of the Left is to put forth a coherent vision that explains the hopelessness of relying on Democrats, and the hopelessness of believing that capitalism can be reformed, and that only systematic change -- i.e., getting rid of capitalism -- can be the solution. That message has to be told in ways that are accessible, not the continual repetitions of slogans. An extremely difficult task, no doubt about it. The alternative is to sit back and let the Right take advantage of a once-a-generation moment. We should also know enough history to know what potentials lie in allowing the Right ride the tiger of a fake populist movement.

"The task of the Left is to put forth a coherent vision that explains the hopelessness of relying on Democrats, and the hopelessness of believing that capitalism can be reformed, and that only systematic change -- i.e., getting rid of capitalism -- can be the solution. That message has to be told in ways that are accessible, not the continual repetitions of slogans."

A vision of what? Can the unconverted be converted with a vision? That's still left mysticism as far as I'm concerned. And you're still talking about slogans, just more accessible ones. At least the old left had bread and butter struggles that appealed to people like an organized workplace and a corresponding higher standard of living. Until the left solves its false inner conflict of doctrinal purity vs. sell out reformism it won't convince anyone of anything. Better to work in the here and now at the reform of capitalism or dream castles in the air of new forms of revolutionary radicalism than to try to revive a failed vision of liberation.

you have no idea the labor it takes to run a real campaign. You took votes away from the genuine candidate. thanks you handed the election to a corporate clone, the man who will make your life miserable and more people homeless.

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